The
Monday schedule began with a pair of
9am business sessions. The one seen
above, titled How Can I
Monetize My Geo-Targeted Domain
Names featured two of the
most experienced people in the
geodomain field, Patrick Carleton
(City Advertising Partnerships),
standing, and Fred Mercaldo (City
Brand Media), seated at top right.

At
the same time in an adjacent room,
(left to right below) Zak
Muscovitch (DNAttorney.com), Eugene
Rome (Rome & Associates) and
Andrew Rosener (MediaOptions.com)
provided advice on Leasing
Domain Names.

Above
& Below: In Monday's main event Uniregistry
Founder and legendary domain
investorFrank
Schilling took the stage in
front of a capacity crowd to talk
about The Evolution of
Domaining. Frank also
demonstrated some new features in
Uniregistry's innovative mobile
phone app (I have been using it
for some time now and it is a
terrific domain registration and
management tool).

Above:
Monday morning continued with five
different sessions that ran
concurrently starting at 11am. In
the one above NameJet General
Manager Jonathan Tenenbaum and SnapNames
VP of Operations Michael White (at
right) gave advice on How to
Dominate the Drop: Best Practices
for Successfully Acquiring Deleting
Domains.

Below:
At the same time Uniregistry
Senior Director of SalesSevan
Derderian was on the Uniregistry
Breakout Stage showing attendees how
to Manage a High Volume of
Domains with Ease.

Above:
Also at 11am, Michael Sumner
(NameBio.com) answered a question
just about every domain owner asks at
one time or another, What's My
Domain Worth? - a session
that gave tips on how to determine
valuations of various kinds of
domains.

At
the same time Michael Gilmour
(ParkLogic.com) conducted a session
on Domain Monetization for
Registries and Registrars
while a panel discussion was held in
another room on Best Practices
for Selling Domains Through Hosting.

Above:
At Noon Monday a lot of tears were shed
as the industry remembered and
honored the late beloved domain
investor Lonnie
Borck who passed away
unexpectedly in October. To honor
Lonnie the Internet
Commerce Association
created the Lonnie Borck Memorial
Award to be presented "in
recognition of extraordinary efforts
in championing the rights of domain
name owners." The first winner
was attorney David Weslow for
his selfless pro bono work on
behalf of Heidi Powell.
David was ill and unable to attend
NamesCon so ICA Executive Director
Daniel Law (center) accepted the
award on his behalf and was honored
to have it handed to him by Lonnie's
wife Ronit and his
brother-in-law Jonathan.
Along with Ronit, Lonnie's friends Nat
Cohen and Elliot Silver
spoke about the kind of person
Lonnie was and why he was so highly
regarded by everyone who had the
pleasure of meeting him.

Below:
The Lonnie Borck Memorial Award was presented
just before the session below on The
Most Shocking UDRP Decisions of 2016
was held. (Left to right) Moderator Bill
Sweetman (NameNinja) welcomed Nat
Cohen, Zak Musocvitch (DNAttorney.com)
and Jason Schaeffer (ESQwire.com)
to the stage to detail some
miscarriages of justice that left
audience members shaking their
heads.

Below:
In another popular noon session on
the Uniregistry Breakout Stage the
company's VP of Sales (and record
breaking broker), Jeff Gabriel,
explained Sales Using the
90/10 Rule.

Above:
The next round of sessions (five in
all) began at 1pm Monday. The one
above dissected Aftermarket
Sales by the Numbers. The
panelists were (left to right): Alan
Shiflett (GoDaddy), Dan
Adamson (Uniregistry), Andy
Simpson (Verisign), Dima
Bietzke (Sedo) and Tessa
Holcomb (Igloo.com).

Below:
Also at 1pm a major new player in
the domain escrow space (and
established powerhouse in the
payments field), Payoneer Escrow,
sent three of their top
representatives to talk about Accepting
Payments the Safe Way. They
included (left to right) Senior
Advisor Brandon Abbey (former
President of Escrow.com),
Jonathan Kremer and Scott
Reynolds (Vice President of B2B Services).

In
additional 1pm sessions, those who
dropped by the Uniregistry Breakout
Stage were given a Behind
the Scenes look at the
popular registrar/registry operator
and Why Content Marketing
Matters for Your Growing Business
was discussed by Sean Tyson and
Sam Wempe from Quietly in
another room.

Above:
At 2pm the topic turned to Investing
in New TLDs - Making Money in the
Short and Long Term in a
panel discussion featuring (left to
right) Charles Gucciardo (The
Gucciardo Law Firm), Jebediah
Burnett (Rightside), Andrew
Rosener (MediaOptions) and Rob
Monster (Epik.com and
DigitalTown).

Also
at 2pm Uniregistry's Darren
Cornwell and Marco Pompei told
those who dropped by the Uniregistry
Breakout Stage how to Sell on the
Go with the company's slick
mobile app.

Below:
At 3pm, just before Namescon's SnapNames/RightOfTheDot
Live Domain Auction got
underway, Escrow.com presented a new
series of Masters of Domains
Awards they introduced to
recognize the top selling domain
brokers on the Escrow.com platform.
Awards were given to each of the top
10 finalists, with the #1
award going to George Hong of
Guta.com (AndrewRosener
of MediaOptions was #2 in the
highly competitive field). George
received his award from Escrow.com
General Manager Jackson Elsegood.

Above: Next it was time for
the highly anticipated SnapNames/RightOfTheDot
Live Domain Auction conducted by
World Champion Auctioneer and Author
Wayne Wheat (below). With a standing
room only crowd on hand nearly $1.3
million in sales were booked.
The top sale was Single.com
at $290,00. NameBio has a
nice rundown of all of the sales
results.

Above:
With the business day over attendees
were ready to move on to their
evening activities. One of the
biggest was a dinner for ICA
members in the Foundation
Room at the House of Blues.
The ICA has doubled its
membership over the past year with
company's like new Gold Level Member
ParkingCrew
throwing their support behind the organization
that protects domain owner rights.
Left to right, just before leaving
for the dinner, are David Thorpe
(ParkingCrew), ICA Executive
Director Daniel Law, Mario
Witte (ParkingCrew), Axel
Kaltz (ParkingCrew), ICA
Operations Manager Kamila Sekiewicz
and Jim Grace (ParkingCrew).

Below:
ICA Executive Director Daniel Law
(standing at right) thanking
attendees at the ICA's Monday
night dinner as well as the dinner
sponsor, Innovation RPM.

Above:
& Below: Elsewhere Monday
night the .ORG Registry
treated their guests to a night at
the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las
Vegas with great food provided
by Cousins Maine Lobster (one
of the most successful companies to
come out of an investment won on
ABC-TV's hit show Shark Tank).

Below:
After being taken to the venue in a
33-foot stretch limo .ORG guests
were given all the quarters they
needed to play an astounding variety
of pinball machines throughout the
evening. Were it not for the well
stocked open bar the scores rung up
probably would have been a lot
higher than they were!

Above:
After spotting a baseball themed
pinball machine that I had actually played
as a teenager, I was eager to
see if I could shake off the rust
and beat my wife Diana
(overly confident that I would).
Instead, she trounced me
taking two games out of three! Looks
like it is back to the minor leagues
for me!

Below:
I am calling a foul on this one! My
friend Ray Dillman Neu
(Co-Founder of THE Domain
Conference) had an unfair advantage
at the Police Trainer game.
Ray recently became a Broward County
Florida Sheriff's Deputy! At
least I had the good sense not to
challenge him on this one, saving myself
further embarrassment after my
experience on the pinball baseball
field.

Above:
In addition to the vintage pinball
games and amazing lobster rolls,
guests could have their portraits
sketched by a very talented
artist. Diana's is just being
finished up here.

Below:
After the ICA and .ORG dinners and
various other functions around town,
most moved on to Uniregistry's
huge late night party open to all
NamesCon attendees at the famous
Hakkasan Night Club inside
the MGM Grand (right across
the street from the Tropicana
Hotel). This shot there features lovely
ladies Angela St. Julien (Brand.bar)
and NamesCon Event Producer Terri
Potratz.

As
I write this day 3 of NamesCon 2017
is winding down with the big Water
Night Fundraiding Party still
ahead. It won't be ending until
around 2am Wednesday (local
time in Las Vegas - 5am
Wednesday in the eastern
U.S.). In my next post from
NamesCon (planned for tomorrow
night) I'll have all of the Tuesday
(January 24) photos & highlights
(day and night) for you.

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Lowdown, so please email editor@dnjournal.comwith any interesting information you might have. If possible,
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